Originally posted by Manicknux:
I never actually liked that sky blue color on the Capri, however, I do like what you've done with it. It's quite a good looking car now. I congratulate you, it's wonderful.
~Justin
P.S. Because of all the custom work you did on the car...I was wondering if you knew anything about interior modifications, such as creating a new dashboard and center console?
Precious little, but as I've come to discover, with enough work, you can make anything look good, just don't get discouraged. I'll give you two possible ways to do it, though.
First, you can find a car with roughly the same measurements (you want it bigger rather than smaller, but THAT won't be hard to find) and you can take the dash and console out of that. Easiest way to do that is to get the dash in, and then cut it to use your stock gauge cluster - you would almost definitely have to reprogram your CPU to drive another car's gauge cluster. Expensive alternative - standalone engine management, if you plan to go nuts, that may be the best bet for you anyway since you can program it to run whatever maf you want, whatever injectors you want, whatever boost you want, whatever timing you want (even based off RPMs)
To remember on interior swaps: Newer cars, particularly Dodge brandings have reaaaalllly deep dashboards - they call that Cab-forward. If you take a dash from them, look forward to a lot of cutting. Also to note - Rearwheel drive cars have a transmission tunnel, so fitting a console from them would be much more difficult than a front-wheel drive.
Second alternative, is you can take your existing dash completely out, and build your own from scratch - you would use cardboard templates to get a pattern, then transfer it to sheet metal - use a mig to tack weld it all the way around (doesn't have to be REAL strong - then coat the whole thing with bondo or fiberglass and prime it (to fight rust) then either wrap it, or sand it and paint it (can you imagine the shine? THAT would be a sight to see! A dash as shiny as your exterior paint! I've also seen people make a skeleton of a speaker box and make curves and whatnot using plastic sheeting and some kind of rosin, which seems like it would make an awesome dash, but be a LOT of work.
A little homework to get you started -
Late model (2000ish) Dodge Neon is about 1/4-1/2" wider than Capri (easily cut to fit width wise, depth is a LOT) (Got most of the way through the deinstall in a pick-n-pull, when after about an hour and a half with no water in the Texas Summer (June) I decided my dash was fine after all (and it really is, the doorpanels are the bad part).
Ford Focus is almost a perfect fit, and the climate controls and everything are arrayed almost identical. The only one they had took a hit in the driver's door, crushing the side of the dash.